DiCaprio is the king of Hollywood. It must be true, it was reported in the Guardian this summer. Tom Cruise is too crackpot for the job these days. George Clooney arrived too late, hair already flecked salt and pepper. Another year Brad Pitt might have it by a whisker (see below). But 2010 is DiCaprio's year, after box office bonanzas for Shutter Island and Inception. He has kept his stock as a class act high by smartly aligning himself with top-drawer directors: Scorsese, Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Nolan. Gone is the sulky, sleazy rep he picked up by partying in his 20s. These days, inquiries into his personal life are met with a dignified wall of silence. Or maybe a quick chat about the environmental impact of driving a Prius. DiCaprio's reward: $28m per movie. But some doubt lingers. How many people salivate over an upcoming DiCaprio performance? Really salivate in the way they did for, say, Robert De Niro – whose shoes he slipped into as Martin Scorsese's go-to.

DiCaprio is only 35 (though seems to have been around forever). He was astonishingly beautiful as a boy (like something frescoed in the Sistine Chapel) and startlingly good in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Journalists still prefix his name with "heartthrob", but in truth those days are long gone. Bluntly speaking, if he was starting out today, casting directors would be slipping his CV into the "character actors" file, which probably suits him fine – DiCaprio hated being a posterboy. After Titanic he turned down leads in American Psycho and Spider-Man. For a while, in the early days, it had looked like he would inherit River Phoenix's mantle of edgy cool. But the big boat sank all that, turbo-boosting him into international stardom. (In Afghanistan, barbers were arrested by the Taliban for offering a haircut called "the Titanic"). And while he may have been freaked out by the screaming girls, DiCaprio must have liked the power it gave him in Hollywood.

Scorsese is the first to stand up for his man's talent. The pair have made four films together: Shutter Island, The Departed, Gangs of New York and The Aviator. "He reminds me of that excitement when De Niro and I stumbled upon a way of working together," says Scorsese. Not everyone agrees. Critics can find him callow; he hasn't nailed a performance since his knock-out turn in Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. He lacks the "dark hinterland" to play a war veteran and grieving widower in Shutter Island one wrote. Maybe DiCaprio ought to watch his back – the business of being king can get awfully treacherous.